


An explosion of sound

by boywonder



Category: Daredevil (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:06:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2143362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boywonder/pseuds/boywonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you came here for an apology, you’re wasting your time.”</p>
<p>“You know I didn’t come here for that.”</p>
<p>“No, you apparently came here to shoot at me.”</p>
<p>“If that were true, I’d have started with the gun, not finished with it. I came here to collect a debt.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	An explosion of sound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xannish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xannish/gifts).



The wind coming off the Hudson carried the smells of the Jersey side of the river with it. Most people out here, even near the docks, didn’t seem to notice. Matt Murdock – Daredevil, more accurately – wasn’t most people. He could smell it the second the wind changed, even when he wasn’t right near the river. Out here at night, perched on a high rise on the border of Hell’s Kitchen, the smell hit him faster than it would have on the ground during the day.

He’d never liked the smell of Jersey. At least, not the smell that washed across the Hudson when the wind changed. Maybe the whole state didn’t actually smell like that; Matt hadn’t spent enough time there to say for sure. But he’d spent enough time smelling the wind this way to decide he didn’t like it. Tonight was no exception. The smell from across the river mingled with the normal harbor smells – boats and cars polluting the air and the water, factories endlessly blowing smoke from both sides of the river, the smell of the dirt and grime that permeated all of New York City, and the smell of the people going about their business (or the ones who had gone hours ago, leaving lingering scents to mix into the potpourri of the Kitchen). After awhile, sitting still was too much, and he had to move again. Too many smells, too many _sounds_ , too much going on. He oriented himself with his radar-like senses, never bothering to do so much as turn his head, and he took off like a runner starting a race. He headed south, sorting through the bombardment of sound, looking for the thing that most deserved his attention. He could never save everyone – he’d learned that lesson over and over again in the time he’d been handing out vigilante justice – so he had to play a sort of crime triage, deciding who to hone in on and rescue, and who to block out, praying either for their forgiveness or god’s on any given night.

An hour passed. Two people saved, hundreds still crying out in the dark. Another hour passed. Three more saved, one of whom cursed him rather than thanking him, and six men who would be in traction if anyone cared enough to get them to a hospital. Matt didn’t. He had no pity for those who preyed on the weak, for those who wreaked havoc in his part of the city. He’d never had much to begin with, and Ryker’s hadn’t helped that.

Another hour passed.

There were too many.

He had been gone too long.

He gritted his teeth and swung himself up a fire escape onto the side of an old tenement building. He was about to move on again (easier to move above ground than on it, after all), when a familiar sound caught his attention. He paused, tense, all muscles ready to spring, like a cat about to pounce. As he listened, though he didn’t become less tense, the momentum he’d had drained. Instead of running off to administer more of Daredevil’s justice, he lowered himself into a crouch on the edge of the building. He could still take off at a moment’s notice, just launch off the building and freefall until he needed to catch himself with one of his clubs, but for now he waited.

He heard distant gunfire. Police sirens. A baby crying. Glass breaking.

Hell’s Kitchen falling down around him, like it always had been, in slow motion that he would spend the rest of his life to bring to a stop.

_Wait,_ he told himself.

He’d learned, years ago now, to let it all wash over him instead of driving him mad. He had to drown out the noise or he had to run toward something, find something to concentrate on.

_ Wait. _

He wasn’t really _listening_ anymore, but he couldn’t turn everything off.

Through the stink of the wind from Jersey, he smelled gunpowder – sharp, pungent… _close_. Closer, closer, and he caught the blood mixed with it.

He forced himself to hear again, and the sounds of the city hit him like a tidal wave. It didn’t matter; he was used to that wave, the ebb and flow of too much constant noise. As a kid, it had nearly driven him insane, but it had become as much a part of his life as the leather and the billy clubs and the bruises. That’s why the cowl covered his ears, after all, though it didn’t do all that much to drown out the sounds of one of the busiest cities in the world.

One sound in particular stood out, and he smiled grimly. If anyone had been watching his face, he would have looked more manic or crazed than actually amused. It was probably good, in light of recent events, that no one was.

When the second sound came – the second boot hitting the dusty roof a few feet behind him – Matt let his muscles uncoil and took the leap he’d been poised to take, off the building and into the sky. He seemed suspended there for a minute, free from the building, free from the sounds, free from gravity, and then reality caught up and he fell almost too quickly. But he was ready, even if the man on the roof behind him was swearing under his breath (Matt couldn’t help but catch the words _goddamnit Murdock_ ), and the modified club hooked on the edge of a railing on the next building. He swung back up, twisted, vaulted the rest of the way onto the waiting roof, and ran.

He had enough of a head start that it took three buildings for his pursuer to catch up. In all fairness, though, he wasn’t actually running _away_. He was running, but he was leading, not trying to escape.

The man following him, however, hadn’t gotten that memo.

Matt was _good_ , but not infallible. He heard the gun being cocked a little late. He skidded to a stop near a chimney pipe, and turned to face the other man. The gun went off, only a few feet away, sending shocks of sound more like cannons than small gunfire slamming into Matt’s senses. The bullet missed by barely an inch, and it was enough to be distracting. It didn’t make a _noise_ as it went past, exactly, but Matt could _feel_ the displaced air, the heat of it. He could smell the residue from the gun, the powder that created the explosion in the first place.

“ _Now_ I have your attention,” the man with the gun said. Matt managed to focus enough to “see” him put the gun back in its holster, under the heavy flap of his coat. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were just fucking around with me.” The words were a rumble of sound, hoarse, from vocal cords that probably hadn’t had much to drink all night.

“Shame you know better,” Matt said, from behind clenched teeth, annoyance obvious in his tone.

“I saw that bullshit press conference earlier,” the man said, ignoring Matt’s words.

“I didn’t know the Punisher watched TV,” Matt answered.

Frank Castle snorted. “Hard to miss it when it’s broadcast all over the city five times in one day.”

“Heard you held some lawyer captive for awhile,” Matt said, careful with his tone and his facial expression. He hadn’t seen his own face in a mirror in over a decade, but he knew how to keep expression off of it.

“Don’t bother. No one else is up here to listen in. If they were, you’d already know.”

“You going to point that grudge at me, then?” Matt asked, ignoring Frank’s words the same way Frank had ignored his.

“I don’t like being your scapegoat more than I have to.”

“It was the only believable explanation. If you came here for an apology, you’re wasting your time.”

“You know I didn’t come here for that.”

“No, you apparently came here to shoot at me.”

“If that were true, I’d have started with the gun, not finished with it. I came here to collect a debt.”

Matt’s practiced courtroom stoicism cracked minutely, though the cowl hid most of the change in his expression. He caught it soon enough; he just had to hope Frank hadn’t noticed. Matt could “see” faces moving, but he couldn’t read expressions. That meant Frank could do something he couldn’t, and he hated not having a level playing field. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“My reputation is bad enough without help,” Frank said, more or less by way of explanation. “You _do_ owe me.”

Matt let his annoyance slide back into place; that was easier than confusion. It left him less vulnerable. “Your reputation is what _you_ made it. It’s only a believable story because of what you’ve done before.”

“I don’t take hostages, and I only kill criminals.”

“So S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t come down on you for it. Congrats.”

“You owe me, Murdock. I’m not leaving until you admit that.”

“What do you think I ‘owe’ you? No…what do you think I’m actually going to give you?”

“Assistance.”

This time when the courtroom face dropped, it dropped entirely.

“ _Assistance_?”

“Gang used to operate out of the Kitchen until a blind man declared himself Kingpin and chased them out.”

”I already heard this story from Luke Cage six months ago,” Matt said. “I don’t need it from _you_.”

Frank went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “I haven’t been able to find their hideout. They keep moving it.”

“And?”

“And you can follow them easier. Scent, sound. Whatever it is you do. They were your problem to begin with.”

“And you think I’m going to help you find these goons so you can shoot them all in the head? Don’t come into _my city_ and talk to me about what I owe you. I’m not you. I never will be. I think I proved that.”

“This isn’t a request, and it isn’t a negotiation, Murdock. You help me find them, and you can take them to the cops or wherever else makes you sleep easier at night. Otherwise, I find these guys, guys from _your_ city, and I do what I always do. I’ll find them without you. Maybe a few more innocent people get hurt, and we both have to live with that. I thought you were all about legal justice.”

Matt’s jaw clenched. “So it’s an ultimatum.”

“It’s a statement. I don’t need to threaten you any more than you need to threaten me. Dawn is in two hours and six minutes. Are you coming or not?”

Matt was quiet for a minute, considering whether an argument was worth it.

Finally, he said, “Go. I’ll follow you.”

Even using Matt like a police dog, the search that night proved fruitless. Dawn came too quickly. Matt couldn’t see the sky lighten like Frank could, but there was always a change as the city woke up. The city was widely known as “the city that never sleeps,” which was accurate to a point, but there was still a change as the daytime workers started to get up and move into their day.

“I have to be in court at 10,” Matt said, turning away from the edge of the warehouse roof. He was vaguely facing Frank, but he didn’t look directly at him. He remembered that less these days than he had before he’d been locked in Ryker’s. With Daredevil’s mask on, he didn’t need to remember at all.

“Meet me here tomorrow night,” Frank said, without any hint in his rumbling tone that he meant it as mere suggestion.

Matt left without answering, heading home to get a couple precious hours of sleep before he went to court the next day.

Court, as it turned out, was still a nightmare. People didn’t _really_ believe he wasn’t Daredevil, and it made it hard for him to actually get any work done. So as it turned out, he had time to fall asleep on the sofa in the office.

He heard Foggy come in, even through the haze of sleep. He was awake by the time Foggy shook him, but he was still tense.

“How late were you out last night, Matty?” Foggy said. He was talking softly, but with the close proximity, to Matt’s waking up senses he sounded like he was shouting. Matt clenched his jaw and ignored it.

“Late,” he responded, waving Foggy off. “Couldn’t make it through court today, but it wasn’t because I fell asleep.”

“More of the same, huh?” Foggy said. He sighed heavily – a sound like wind rushing by at 25 mph to Matt’s ears – and flopped onto the other end of the sofa. If Matt had been half asleep before, the force of Foggy sitting down so close to him ensured he wasn’t now. His friend smelled like grease from French fries, and the leftovers of condiments that went along with greasy meals like that. Matt was used to it, having spent much of his adult life in close proximity to Foggy Nelson, but it was enough to wake him up anyway.

“Yeah. We’ll figure it out, Foggy, don’t worry about it. I’m going to go home and make a phone call.”

“Why can’t you make it here?”

Matt stood up and grabbed his coat off the back of the couch where he’d set it before he’d given up on being awake. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Foggy. If anyone calls for me, tell them I’ll get back to them.”

He was halfway out the door and almost all the way into his coat before Foggy managed more than a sputtering protestation.

He spent most of the afternoon calling people who might be able to help him track down the people they were looking for. He figured that the Punisher was just doing this to annoy him, to get back at him for using him for an excuse without asking. Still, if it meant locking these goons up instead of leaving them to be murdered, Matt had to go with it. It was a moral issue for him – something he knew that Frank knew. He didn’t much like being played, but he _did_ grudgingly owe Frank one.

Long after dark – and without any further sleep – Daredevil waited on the edge of the warehouse he’d left Punisher on at daybreak. There were several taller buildings, which left him plenty of shadows to hide in. It wasn’t that he could tell where the shadows were, of course; he just knew how to make himself rather unobtrusive when he needed to, even wearing red.

As usual, he heard Frank coming. Frank could be quiet enough when he needed to, but he wasn’t exactly _quiet_. He was a big man, carrying a lot of weaponry, wearing a trenchcoat and heavy boots. Skilled as he was, with Matt listening for him, he couldn’t have snuck up if he’d wanted to. The guns made their own sounds, tiny moveable parts clinking, or brushing against the heavy fabric of the trench. And those _boots_ , combined either with the gravelly street or the metal siding climbing up, well, they were hardly what Matt would have called _quiet_.

It took Frank a minute to find him, crouched in the shadows.

“You’re in the wrong part of town to try to be a gargoyle,” Frank said as he approached.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“It’s pointing out an absurdity.”

Matt wasn’t sure if _that_ was supposed to be a joke, either.

“I think I found what you’re looking for,” he said, changing the subject and standing all the way up. “We were looking in the wrong place.”

Matt had connections in several places – including people with direct connection to S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers. With that kind of intel, he’d followed leads off and on through the day. Foggy wouldn’t like it, of course, and Matt knew that Daredevil shouldn’t be out before dark, but the quicker they took care of this, the quicker he could get Frank Castle off his case.

Frank’s lead in the warehouses was half-right – the men had been using one to help with a smuggling effort, transporting in drugs and weapons. But the guys running the ring didn’t tend to stay in the obvious place. Instead, they’d bought up most of an old tenement building about three miles away and were running operations out of that.

Cleaning them out was messy. They didn’t have warning, but it wasn’t the first time they’d had to put up a fight. One or two of them had been on the receiving end of Daredevil’s crusade when he’d cleaned out Hell’s Kitchen before the feds had fucked up the effort by arresting Matt Murdock. So they knew some of what they were in for. But even if they’d been prepared for Daredevil, they weren’t prepared for the Punisher at all.

Frank used rubber bullets to avoid having to fight Daredevil too, but that didn’t mean he was an easy to take on opponent. Really, neither of them were, and combined, there wasn’t much chance for the men they were fighting. They were mid-level crooks, and put up a hell of a fight, but it didn’t matter.

Two of them managed to break and run in the chaos. Matt followed without thinking, belatedly realizing he was trusting _the Punisher_ not to kill the men. He forced that grim thought away, reminded himself that Frank hadn’t even had to be asked to use rubber bullets this time, and kept going.

The man ran into the alleys, as if that would save him. But it didn’t matter where he went – Matt could follow the distinct pounding of his heart, or the way the laces of his shoes hit the pavement on the right side where they’d come undone, or the smell of his sweat mixed with stale cigarettes and the drug-tinged acid smell leftover from the tenement. He was as good as caught, long before he’d started running.

Matt caught him at a dead end, swinging down off the roof and using the thug, more or less, to break his fall. The man wasn’t a good fighter. He was loud, and his angry words rang echoed off the alley walls. Matt was used to that sort of reaction, though, and blocked it out. He’d have a headache later – he had a headache every night that he came out and did anything like this – but for now the adrenaline and the training he’d put himself through carried him.

When the man stopped being able to fight back, Matt pulled him up by his coat. “I told you to clean up or get out,” he growled. “You didn’t go far enough.”

He knocked the man out, hard, before he could offer protest. He left him on the steps of the nearest police station and went to find Frank again.

He found him back at the warehouse, and he wasn’t alone. Three men had either followed him – or he had followed them – or they’d been there when he went back. Matt heard the gunfire long before he got there, and while _Frank_ was using rubber bullets, the other two men weren’t. He wasn’t worried that it put Frank Castle at a disadvantage, of course, but the quicker men with guns were disarmed, the less damage they caused.

The warehouse was a much worse place for him than the alleys were. The alleys had open space above them, so while sounds echoed off the walls, they didn’t get trapped by the ceiling. Inside the warehouse, there was far too much noise. The gunfire threw off his senses _just_ a little. Of course, he could compensate – he wouldn’t have been able to keep doing what he did if he couldn’t – but the sound caused some level of confusion that he couldn’t shake off. Still, there was no way he was going to just stand around and do nothing.

It was over fairly quickly, though for Matt it seemed much longer with the sound of bullets and shouting ringing endlessly in the closed-in space. It became instinct more than anything else – move, strike, move again, compensate, dodge, strike. It would have been almost zen if it weren’t for the noise; despite his father having urged him not to follow in his violent footsteps, Matt _liked_ fighting. He had since he’d started it, which was a small part of why he continued doing it. Most of his reasons for being Daredevil were unselfish…but not all of them.

The noise, however, lessened the enjoyment somewhat. It became more about getting rid of the guns – the source of most of the noise.

Eventually, they succeeded. One man lay bleeding and unconscious on the floor, one was nursing what Matt were broken bones, and Frank had the third guy.

“You really think you’re gonna chase us out of the whole city, Daredevil? Get the fuck outta here. Stick with what you know,” the guy said, leveling his sneering gaze at Matt. Matt was, as ever, impervious to glares. He forced himself to look at the man’s face. With the cowl over his eyes, no one could tell where his eyes themselves did and didn’t look, so the effect was (he had learned) usually effective.

“I’ll tell you what I told the last one. I warned all of you to shape up or get out. You chose to get out, but you didn’t go far enough. You think my jurisdiction ends at34th Street? Wrong.” He growled the words out through his headache, heard them vibrate against the walls and come back to him. He hated that, hearing Daredevil’s voice coming back to him in that weird, echoing, diminished way. The other conscious people in the warehouse probably didn’t hear it at all, but it still irritated Matt.

“You gonna have Punisher ice me then? Thought you wasn’t a killer.”

“There are much worse things than dying,” Matt said back, unimpressed. He heard Frank chuckle – a cold, empty sound, and one he could have done without hearing any reverb on.

“Let’s get them to the station before I think better of it,” Matt said, and turned to leave. His head was ringing slightly, and the sound of his own footsteps added to his irritation.

The buzzing in his brain from the sound overload had him just distracted enough that when the man started to struggle to get away from Frank, he wasn’t paying as much attention as he should have been. He heard the scuffle, figured Frank had it under control, and kept walking. When he heard the gun click, he didn’t notice that the gun wasn’t _Frank’s_ gun.

He _did_ notice the gun when the man raised it. The world moved in slow motion. The gun went off, sending yet another bombardment of sound blaring into Matt’s ears. Frank moved one way, and Matt moved the other. The man’s gun arm went down, and the shot went wild, but not as wild as Matt would have liked. The bullet grazed his right leg, but with his senses, it didn’t matter. He felt it tear through the flesh about a quarter of an inch deep on the outside of his calf, sending pain blazing upwards, throwing his balance off. He caught himself before he could fall, and turned to retaliate.

Frank was already there, though. Matt heard the snap – another grating sound in a chaotic mess of noise that comprised his evening – and when he focused his radar senses he could perceive the man’s hand hanging limply from his wrist. The man screamed, and fell to his knees as the gun clattered to the ground.

Matt’s head throbbed in time with his leg. He forced the pain away, like he always did, and forced himself to walk normally back toward Frank and the thug.

He got there as Frank reached into his coat to pull out a gun from one of his shoulder holsters. Matt had a feeling that this gun wasn’t likely to have rubber bullets in it.

Matt reached Frank just as he aimed at the now-unarmed thug. Matt brought his hand down a little harder than he really needed to on Frank’s shoulder. Even through several layers, he could feel a faint warmth from Frank’s skin. But more than that, he could feel the shift in the muscles as Frank tensed under his touch, tensed as if he might fight him off.

Frank turned his head slightly toward Matt, but he didn’t actually look away from the man on the ground (not that Matt could tell the difference).

“Don’t,” Matt said, the threat in the word barely contained.

Frank made a scoffing sound – a quiet one, but Matt was close enough to him that it didn’t seem all that quiet – and pulled the hammer back on the gun.

“Castle—“

The gun went off before Matt could do anything else, and he heard the man on the ground scream. His hand gripped Frank’s shoulder tight enough to bruise, and his other hand moved for his billy club without thought. However, above the scream, he heard another sound – a racing heartbeat, not a slowing one. There were several heartbeats to listen for, but there was nothing telling him one of them was about to stop. When he forced his perception again, he could tell that the injured man was bleeding, seemed like from…a leg wound.

“Get up,” Frank said to the man, shoving Matt’s hand off of him. He didn’t re-holster the gun. “If he can walk with a bullet in his leg, so can you.”

Matt was pretty sure Frank knew the bullet wasn’t lodged in his leg, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel that bad for the thug. He never could feel that bad for them.

Matt left the still-conscious man to struggle alongside Frank. Still refusing to acknowledge the pain in his leg, he grabbed one of the two unconscious ones and carried him, over his shoulder, back to the cops. By then, Frank had rendered his charge unconscious as well, and they left them on the steps with the last one. Frank went back – somewhat grudgingly – to get the last one.

Matt stood watch to make sure he’d actually come back. 

He did, with the last body in tow. After he’d dumped the man none too gently alongside his cohorts, he jerked his head toward the street. “Come with me,” he said, and turned to go, leaving Matt to stay or follow as he chose.

Matt considered leaving, but curiosity got the better of him, and he forced his legs to move again, following Frank off down the street and into the tangle of buildings.

Frank led him to one of his many safehouses. Matt knew the location of a couple of them already, but generally as soon as he knew one, Frank stopped coming there. He figured the same would be true this time.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. 

Frank didn’t answer. Instead, he led Matt into the sparsely decorated space. Matt stood inside the door for a minute, letting his senses feed the layout of the room back to him. Cot in the corner. A stool. Three folding chairs – two already unfolded, one folded and leaning against a wall. Large, old, industrial sink. A room that led to a shower stall. Cabinets on one side. A card table with various things on it – pens, a notebook, bandages. A bigger table with nothing on it. An empty trash can. A stand with a microwave. No stove. Minimal lighting; Matt couldn’t see the lights, but he could hear the buzzing from the fluorescent bulbs.

The room smelled like gun oil and old washed away blood. Like Frank, only less humanity in the smell.

Frank pulled his coat off and tossed it off, carelessly, into a corner. Matt heard it hit heavily, probably because it had a weapon or three stashed in the pockets. There was a slight echo, but the room wasn’t like the warehouse; it was big and open, but it didn’t have that reverb effect on every sound. Matt’s growing headache was grateful for that.

He started opening cabinets, pulled several things out, and pulled a chair into the center and waved a hand at it. “Sit,” he said – still not a question.

Matt frowned at him – a look emphasized by the cowl he had yet to pull off – but he limped over and sat down anyway. He could feel the cold metal of the chair through the leather of the costume, and it raised goosebumps along his skin. He was grateful those wouldn’t be visible; it seemed somehow more vulnerable than he wanted to be in front of Frank Castle if he had another choice.

Frank pulled the smaller table up, sliding it across the concrete floor with a screeching sound that practically made Matt wince. He set the things he was holding down on it, then knelt in front of Matt.

“Let me see your leg.”

“You’re kidding,” Matt said, speaking before really thinking about it.

“You’re bleeding,” Frank countered, matter-of-factly.

Matt swallowed a sigh and slid his leg forward.

Frank’s hands were bare, though Matt hadn’t noticed when he’d taken off the gloves. He could feel the warmth of those hands more acutely now than he had earlier, in stark contrast to the coldness from the chair.

“Got lucky,” Frank said, letting go of Matt’s leg again.

“No I didn’t,” Matt said. Frank, once again, didn’t answer.

“Decide if it’s going to hurt less to pull that up or down,” Frank said, standing up to take stock of the things he’d pulled out of the cabinet. He didn’t gesture, but Matt guessed he was talking about the costume.

“You think I’m going to take off my pants?” Matt asked, allowing some slight amusement to creep into his voice.

“Or you’re going to roll them up. I bet I don’t need to tell you which one will hurt more.”

“I can live with pain.”

“Then get on with it so I can patch you up.”

“You know I can do this myself, right?”

No answer.

Matt didn’t bother swallowing the sigh this time. He leaned forward and took off his boots first, then pushed himself back to his feet, unfastened his belt, and slid the bottom half of his costume off his hips and down his legs. It _did_ hurt some as he wiggled out of the tight, sweaty leather, but he refused to give Frank the satisfaction of letting it show on the visible part of his face.

He realized, thinking about it, that he probably looked ridiculous with half the costume on, so he reached up and pulled the cowl back off his head as well.

“Easier that way. Sit back down,” Frank said. His face never changed that Matt could tell.

Matt did, and the cold was more acute now, with only boxer briefs to ward it off. Plus, his bare legs touched the cold metal now, and there was no way to hide the goosebumps. Frank, for his part, didn’t bother commenting on them, but it annoyed Matt to even be in this position.

Frank knelt down again. His hands were warm but the iodine he used to clean the wound was cold, and it stung. Matt sucked his breath in in a hiss, unable to help it; everything Frank did, he did without warning or comment.

Frank was well-versed at quick bandaging, and it showed in the speed and precision he used to bind the wound. It really was only a flesh wound. Matt could tell it had bled quite a bit – both from the smell and the feel of it, but he wasn’t in danger of losing too much blood. He could have done it himself, without Frank’s help, and without having to limp his way to the Night Nurse. He didn’t really know why Frank had even bothered, but here they were.

The Punisher wasn’t much of a mystery, but the man behind the spray paint skull face sure as hell could be.

Frank finished wrapping Matt’s leg and stood up, moving away to the sink to wash the blood off his hands. Matt flexed his leg experimentally, somewhat hoping Frank hadn’t done a good job so he could criticize him for it – that was much easier than being openly grateful – but there was nothing he could complain about. It was snug, but not too tight, and he could move just fine.

“I’m going to shower. Pull the door all the way shut when you leave or it won’t lock right,” Frank said. He didn’t wait for Matt to answer, instead walking off toward the room with the shower stall.

Matt listened to him go. There wasn’t a door, so there wasn’t anything to shut. He heard the sounds of boots being unlaced and pulled off, then clothing rustling, leather and metal and cloth hitting the floor. The shower turned on, and shortly the sound of the water changed, going from just hitting the floor to hitting skin.

After a minute of listening, he realized how absurd the situation was. He was sitting in one of _the Punisher_ ’s safehouses, with his pants off, listening to the sounds of the shower.

He pulled the bottom half of the costume back on, but hesitated to leave. Something about this didn’t add up, for him, and he hated feeling like Frank had one up on him. So he waited, though he moved from the cold chair to sit on the edge of the cot. That was cold, too, though not as cold as the metal chair.

He didn’t wait very long, only about ten minutes or so. The water shut off, and the sound of the pipes gurgled for a minute. He heard more rustling, and assumed that was the sound of the towel. He heard another sound, like liquid being poured, followed by the toilet flushing, and was suddenly annoyed at himself for eavesdropping. It wasn’t that he had _much_ of a choice on listening, but still…

Frank walked out of the bathroom, rubbing the water from his close-cropped hair with a towel. He stopped as soon as he saw Matt.

Matt could tell he wasn’t wearing any clothes, but he didn’t comment on it. If Frank was embarrassed, he couldn’t tell; it wasn’t as if he could hear or sense if someone’s face flushed, and Frank’s heartbeat never changed.

“Murdock. Thought you left,” he said. There was something Matt could catch in his voice – wariness or suspicion, sounded like.  
Matt stood up. “Why did you really rope me into this business?” he asked, though it was more a demand than a question.

“I told you that already.”

“It doesn’t add up. You could have found those guys on your own, eventually. You may not have S.H.I.E.L.D. connections, but I know you have ways of getting information. It might have taken a little longer. What did they do to get on your radar, anyway? They’re just drug runners, small-time weapons dealers.”

“Criminals are criminals,” Frank said, avoiding the question.

“Not to you, they’re not,” Matt said, pushing the issue.

“They’re _criminals_. I take criminals out.”

“With help from Daredevil? Since when you care about appeasing me by turning those people into the cops?”

“I don’t. Never did. I just wanted your contacts, and I knew if I gave you a choice to save lives instead of end them, you still think you’re one of the good guys. You wouldn’t be able to resist.”

“Stop fucking with me, Castle,” Matt said, frowning. He took a step forward, threatening without really meaning to. “You _didn’t need me_.”

Frank dropped the towel on the floor. The wet cloth sounded different than the dry clothes had sounded, landing on the floor with almost a plop. That sound didn’t echo at all, instead just falling flat in the insulated room.

Frank took a step forward, too, and there was no mistaking the combativeness in his stance. Still, Matt didn’t budge.

“I told you I wanted to watch you turn into me, didn’t I?” Frank said, his voice low. The threat stayed in his body, but not in his voice. His voice was cold, and Matt read that as anger; he’d been around Frank enough to recognize it.

“And I proved to you that I wouldn’t. If I didn’t turn into you in Ryker’s, isn’t that enough? I will never be you. I will never do what you do.” Matt’s tone wasn’t nearly as even as Frank’s. In fact, he was practically shouting.

“I was just checking,” Frank responded, flatly. “Making sure you still at least pretended to care.”

Matt couldn’t take that kind of answer. He knew it was still bullshit, though he couldn’t figure out what the truth was. Frank was pushing his buttons on purpose, and he was letting it happen. Even as he moved, fist raised, running on anger and the easy familiarity of combat more than thought, he knew he was letting himself be played.

Frank blocked the punch easily. Matt wasn’t exactly surprised – he wasn’t calculating. He was too angry. That worked with petty criminals, but Frank had been fighting much longer than Matt had, and he was ready for it.

Frank wasn’t really trying, either, and that made Matt angrier. He was defending, but he wasn’t attacking.

“Fight back,” Matt hissed, as Frank dodged a left hook by centimeters.

“Stop fighting me,” Frank answered. He didn’t counterattack, but he kept blocking.

It went on for another minute or so; to Matt’s mind, it seemed longer.

Finally, Frank got sick of Matt’s rage and put in actual effort. He didn’t really go for actual hits; he wasn’t in the mood to actually fight Daredevil. If he had been, he wouldn’t have brought him back here. Frank feinted to the left, and Matt didn’t catch that it was a feint until a second too late. He was good, sure, but he was angry and Frank wasn’t. That left them on uneven ground. 

The real hit wasn’t even a punch – it was a leg sweep. It caught Matt’s injured leg and knocked him off balance. As he fell backwards, he thought, _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. The fresh jolt of pain in his leg was a little distracting, but he caught himself as he fell so at least he wouldn’t fall flat and get the wind knocked out of him. 

Frank was there, though, straddling him, keeping him from getting up. 

“This is pointless,” Frank said. Matt noticed that the coldness had disappeared from his tone, and turned to actual audible annoyance. So his anger had faded, but he wasn’t exactly pleased.

Matt was still mad, but not as mad as he’d been.

“Get off of me,” he said, and pushed to get Frank off.

Frank didn’t budge. “Stop fighting,” he said, and in those words he heard the soldier that Frank had once been.

“Tell me the truth and I’ll leave.”

“Listen to you, choirboy, issuing demands when you have no leverage against me. I told you all I’m going to. You helped me, it’s over. I fixed your leg, but if you want to keep going, that’s fine.”

“Get _off_ ,” Matt said, forcing the words out from behind clenched teeth.

Frank leaned down close enough that Matt could feel the warmth from his breath. “ _No,_ ” he said, softly.

Matt stopped actively struggling, thinking of how to get Frank off of him. He was suddenly aware of the fact that Frank was _entirely naked_. All that separated them was the leather and mesh of Matt’s costume. Through that, he could feel the heat of Frank’s body as he’d felt his hands before. But more than that, he could feel the shape of the man – the muscles in his legs pressing against Matt’s own, the weight of one hand on his shoulder, and the way his balls rested against him, warmer than any other place they were touching.

He’d never smelled Frank fresh out of the shower before. Usually, he smelled like guns and blood and death. Now, he smelled faintly of “unscented” soap, and something else that he had no words for. Every person had their own underlying scent, of course; Matt knew that. He’d caught Frank’s more than once, but usually mixed with something other than that faint soap smell. This way, mostly, he was just smelling Frank on his own.

He tensed up again, but not because he was trying to fight his way out.

“Why are we doing this?” he asked, and found that the anger had bled out of him. It was unsatisfying, though, in a way he couldn’t articulate. It wasn’t like his anger had gained him any ground, any answers, or even a really good solid hit. Impotent anger was the worst kind.

“I don’t know. Must be leftover from the hell you crawled out of,” Frank said. To Matt’s ears, it was more honest than anything else he’d said in the past 24 hours.

Frank was still leaning down. He shifted his weight, but didn’t pull away. As he moved, Matt heard his heartbeat change, just for a moment.

Later, thinking back, Matt wouldn’t be able to tell which one of them moved first. But in the end, Frank let go of Matt’s shoulders and Matt reached up for Frank, and their mouths crashed together. It wasn’t romantic, or even well coordinated. There were too many teeth, and the angle was strange, but it didn’t matter. The violence of the kiss mirrored the violence of most of their interactions. Maybe Frank was right – something was left over from everything that had happened in prison. Or maybe sex and violence were just easy to combine. 

Matt heard his own heartbeat pounding as their tongues met, and he heard Frank’s rise to join it. The two heartbeats pounded different rhythms in his brain, never quite matching. Frank shifted again, taking the awkwardness out of the angle. He balanced on one arm so he wouldn’t put his full weight on Matt’s chest. With the shift in position, Matt could feel more of him, the heat of him, the way his cock hardened between their bodies.

He shoved Frank off so he could sit up. This time, Frank let him. Matt sat up enough to pull the top of the costume off. Frank’s hands moved to help, and together they managed. Matt pulled his gloves off over that, and when he put his hands on Frank’s skin, he stopped thinking about it altogether.

Touching anyone bare-handed, past a handshake, was always somewhat overloading to Matt. Hands were the most sensitive, the most receptive to touch. He could feel enough through Daredevil’s gloves, but without them, he could feel _too_ much. He could feel every scar on the other man’s skin like topography on a map, starkly contrasting with the rest of him. He could feel every hair, every slight imperfection. He could feel Frank’s heart beat anywhere the veins came anywhere near the skin – not just at normal pulse points. It was hard to think of anything else.

Frank shoved him back down again. One rough hand travelled down Matt’s chest – also covered in scars, though maybe a few less than Frank himself had – and over the front of his shorts. Realizing that there was still a cup in the way, Frank’s other hand moved to join the first, pulling at Matt’s belt. He moved so he could finally pull the costume off, taking Matt’s underwear with it. Matt lifted his hips to help speed that process along. Once the costume was at least most of the way off and he let his hips fall again, he gasped at the cold of the cement on his bare skin. 

Frank’s hands returned again, this time finding Matt’s already-hard cock and stroking him roughly. There was too much sensation, and it sent Matt’s radar somewhat haywire. He couldn’t focus on the exact shape of the man above him, or the exact distance of the cot from where they were. That left him to focus on Frank’s hands on his skin, and Frank’s mouth on his skin, and the rapid sound of their hearts and breaths.

Frank moved away, leaving Matt aching and his cock dripping. He moved his head as if he could actually _look_ for Frank, trying to orient his senses again in the sudden absence of touch.

“You want to stop me?” Frank asked – a genuine inquiry. He pushed a lot of Matt’s boundaries, but this wasn’t one of them.

Matt shook his head, trying to force speech to return. “No,” he said. The word sounded loud in his own ears.

Frank didn’t answer. He moved away across the room and back to where the shower was. Matt considered moving to the cot, but that required more effort than he really had to put out, so he stayed where he was, reorienting himself before Frank came back to pull him apart again.

It wasn’t a very long wait.

Frank came back with a bottle in his hand. Matt couldn’t tell without touching it what it was, but he was willing to be that _Frank Castle_ didn’t keep lube just lying around in safehouses. Matt kept condoms and lube back at his brownstone. He kept some in his desk at the office. He even kept a condom in his wallet. But Matt Murdock was known to be a ladies man, and Frank Castle was known to spend days away hunting people down and killing them.

As it turned out, Matt would have won the bet; it wasn’t lubricant, it was just lotion. Apparently even the Punisher’s hands could get too dry. Matt might have laughed about that if he’d been able to muster the ability.

Frank knelt down by him again and rested too-warm hand low on his stomach.

“Still not going to stop me?”

“No.”

“I can’t hear you. Are you sure?”

Matt managed an annoyed look. He knew his words sounded much louder to his own ears, right now, than they did to Frank’s, but that wasn’t the point.

“I said _no_ ,” he said, louder.

“No you’re not sure?” Frank said, sliding his hand from Matt’s stomach to his thigh.

Matt wasn’t very impressed with the teasing, and he moved his hips, trying to get Frank to do more than just that.

“No, I don’t want to stop you,” Matt said, his words halted.

“You’re _sure_?” Frank asked again, letting his thumb slide under where the tip of Matt’s cock threatened to touch his stomach, smearing the pre-come that had leaked there.

Matt sucked in a breath too sharply. “Damnit, Frank, just…” He trailed off, and Frank _just_ kept moving his hand slowly. Having just that one small bit of contact after having had so much, and with his cock hard and aching, was like torture to Matt. All he could focus on was that _one_ sensation, and how it wasn’t enough.

The overload of sensation that sex always gave him was much preferable to that one burning point of contact.

“Just?” Frank said, after a minute that went on forever.

“Just _fuck me_ already,” Matt said, demanding as much now as he had when pressing for answers. Only now, he had none of his logical persuasion to rely on, and had to go with only the need in his voice.

Luckily, Frank was more receptive to that tactic than to Matt’s courtroom persuasion.

Matt didn’t spend a lot of his time sleeping with men, so it was painful. He could handle pain – this and much more besides – but it was somewhat unfamiliar. His world view narrowed again, and when Frank finally took his fingers away and replaced them with his cock, he couldn’t even think with the part of his brain that gave him a 360 degree sense of the world. There was nothing else but Frank pressing into him, their hearts pounding too loud, their breaths and groans echoing around him in an explosion of sound in the blind darkness that would have been his reality all the time if he hadn’t had the extra senses to negate it.

Afterward, he just lay on the cement floor, now grateful for the coldness it gave him. Frank moved away and disappeared again.

After a few moments, Matt heard the rush of water in the sink, and focused on that. From there, his radar sense slowly turned itself back on, and the layout of the room returned to his mind. It was only then that he was able to drag himself up onto the cot. He lay there, waiting for Frank to come back.

He was still waiting when he fell asleep.

The next morning, he woke up alone. There was a rough wool blanket – army issue, no doubt – thrown over him. It smelled like gun oil and blood and…Frank.

Matt kicked his way out of it, pissed off at himself for falling asleep and leaving Frank to disappear on him. He still didn’t have a real answer, and he was sure Frank would fall off the map for awhile until Matt gave up on interrogating him about it.

His costume was folded up on the chair nearby. On top of it was a piece of paper. The impressions in the paper were deep, as if to make sure he could read them.

_If you’re late to work today, I might consider us even._

Matt crumpled the paper in his hand, feeling anger boil up inside him, hot and unexpected.

He pulled on the costume, wincing when he had to shove his wounded leg into the torn fabric. Still, there was nothing for it; it wasn’t as if he’d brought a change of clothes.

Before he left, he ripped up the note and left it in pieces on the floor. No one could ever accuse him of not being petty when he felt like it, that was for sure.

Not that he thought Frank would come back here, but just in case he did, he could see exactly what Matt thought of his _debt_.


End file.
